Gilgamesh and Enkidu

“Fame haunts the man who visits the underworld, who lives to tell my entire tale identically. So like a sage, a trickster or saint, GILGAMESH was a hero who knew secrets and saw forbidden places, who could even speak of the time before the Flood because he lived so long, learned much, and spoke his life to those who first cut into clay his bird-like words. He commanded walls for Uruk and for E-Anna, our holy ground, walls that you can see still; walls where weep the weary widows of dead soldiers. Go to them and touch their immovable presence with gentle fingers to find yourself. No one else ever built such walls. Climb Uruk’s Tower and walk about on a windy night. Look. Touch. Taste. Sense. What force created such mass?

“Open up the special box that's hidden in the wall and read aloud the story of Gilgamesh’s life. Learn what sorrow taught him; learn of those he overcame by wit or force or fear as he, a town’s best child, acted nobly in the way one should lead and acted wisely too as one who sought no fame. Child of Lugalbanda’s wife and some great force, Gilgamesh is a fate alive, the finest babe of Ninsun, she who never let a man touch her, indeed so sure and heavenly, so without fault. He knew the secret paths that reached the eagle’s nest above the mountain and and knew too how just to drop a well into the chilly earth. He sailed the sea to where Shamash [Utu] comes, explored the world, sought life, and came at last to Utnapishtim [Ziusudra] far away who did bring back to life the flooded earth. Is there anywhere a greater king who can say, as Gilgamesh may, ‘I am supreme?’”

The epic begins telling how Gilgamesh was abusing his authority as king and how his tribe was “invincible” and “aroused by small insults.” He also kept his warriors away from their fathers and also took advantage of his kingly right to sleep with the bridesmaids of the city before the groom. The men of Uruk prayed to heaven, asking, “Who created this beast with an unmatched strength and a chant that fosters armies? This warrior keeps boys from fathers in the day. Is this Gilgamesh, is this the shepherd of Uruk’s flocks, our strength, our light, our reason, who hoards the wives of other men for his own purpose?”

Anu, the god of heaven, tells the earth goddess Aruru that since she is the one that fashioned man, she should make an imitation of Gilgamesh so that they would “engage, then disengage, and finally let Uruk’s children live in peace.” She created Enkidu out of a rock in the image of the war god Ninurta and then throws him in the forest. Enkidu becomes a Wildman, running with animals and eating grass. After he begins releasing animals from the traps of the hunter, the hunter’s son is sent to Uruk to bring a courtesan back in order to domesticate him. Gilgamesh sends Shemhet, a temple priestess of Ishtar, and the priestess has sex with Enkidu for a week. “Hot and swollen first, she jumped him fast, knocking out his rapid breath with thrust after loving thrust. She let him see what force a woman has, and he stayed within her scented bush for seven nights, leaping, seeping, weeping, and sleeping there.” After this, Enkidu tries to return to the beasts but they run away from him now. Shemhet tells him, “Now you are a god, with no more need of dumb beasts, however fair. We can now ascend the road to Uruk’s place, where Anu and Ishtar dwell, and there we will see Gilgamesh, the powerful, who rides over the herd like any great king.” And at her words, he wished for a friend for the first time, then asked Shemhet to go with him and be his love at the “immaculate domicile.” He tells her he can do whatever he wants with his “mountainous power” and that he could promote her fame. She then warns him to fear his anger because Gilgamesh is blessed by the gods, but also seems to entice him, and then predicts that Gilgamesh will have a dream foreseeing Enkidu’s arrival. Gilgamesh in fact has two dreams, one in which Enkidu is a “rising star” and one in which he is an “axe,” and in both of them, Gilgamesh sees himself embracing the form, like a “woman he loves best.”

Along the way to Uruk, Shemhat disguises themselves as poor travelers, and they stay with shepherds as Enkidu learns his “new human ways,” including: tracking sheep, using weapons to fight the beasts attacking the herds, how to eat and drink as humans do, and the customs of the city. He also learns of Gilgamesh’s harsh rule, and even before he gets there, he is surrounded by an entourage of people who want to see Enkidu take down the unfair king. Enkidu first meets Gilgamesh at the gate of the city where lovers’ go, where Gilgamesh is bringing some of his new female companions. The two fight for hours along the walls of Uruk, as they were meant to do, but then Enkidu finally sues for peace, saying he had come to “match some fate” with him, not destroy him, and the two joined in sacred friendship.

In tablet three, Gilgamesh convinces Enkidu to go with him to kill the monster Humbaba against the wishes of Gilgamesh’s mother, Ninsun. Ninsun calls out to Shamash, asking why he “shaped his mind” to go after the monster. Enkidu is afraid, but Gilgamesh tells him, “Only gods live forever with Shamash, my friend; for even our longest days are numbered. Why worry about being dust in the wind? Leap up for this great threat. Even if we were to fail and fall in combat, all future clans would say I did the job.” As they leave, the people of Uruk tell Gilgamesh to let Enkidu lead the way and take the risks for him, since he knew the forest well and knew what fights to pick. When fighting some of Humbaba’s guards, Enkidu’s hand is crushed by a shutting gate. Enkidu cries out to Gilgamesh asking what he should do, and Gilgamesh replies, “Brothers, as a man in tears would, you transcend all the rest who’ve gathered, for you can cry and kill with equal force. Hold my hand in yours, and we will not fear what hands like ours can do. Scream in unison, we will ascend to death or love, to say in song what we shall do. Our cry will shoot afar so this new weakness, awful doubt, will pass through you. Stay, brother, let us ascend as one.”

Following Humbaba’s path, they come to the “home of the gods,” the paradise of Ishtar’s other self, called Irnini-most-attractive. All beauty true is ever there where gods do well, where there is cool shade and harmony and sweet-odored food to match the mood.” Gilgamesh has a dream, and this time it is Enkidu who urges him on, telling him that it is a sign from Shamash that they would triumph. Then, without any description of how, Gilgamesh and Enkidu defeat Humbaba, and the dying beast calls out for mercy, saying they could take all the lumber they wanted. But Enkidu shouts even louder, saying, “Kill the beast now, Gilgamesh. Show no weak or silly mercy toward so sly a foe.” In one version of the story, Humbaba calls Enkidu “son of a fish, who knew not his father… who never sucked the milk of his mother?” This might be an association with the fish cult that Enki and Adapa represented. It also seems to insinuate that Enkidu was born of one of the “virgin” priestesses without a father. Gilgamesh slays Humbaba, splattering blood on his cloak and sandals. The chapter then ends, saying, “Soiled by this violent conflict, the friends began their journey back to Uruk’s towering walls expecting now to be received as heroes who had fought and won a legendary battle.” In tablet six, Ishtar comes down to Gilgamesh while he is bathing and asks him to marry her and come to her home “where holy faces wash your feet with tears as do the priests and priestesses of Anu,” and that if he did, everything he touched would turn to gold, the same wish given to King Midas by Dionysus. Gilgamesh asks, “So how am I to love you as you want but still be free to roam or run at will? If we tickled and teased and giggled and kissed, we’d have no time to think clearly of all the things non-lovers do who spend their time better than those who play all day in bed. Besides, I hardly know or trust you very much.” Gilgamesh then recites a song he made for her in which he makes a very short mention of Dumuzi, who in the Akkadian language is called Tammuz:

Ishtar is the hearth gone cold,
A broken door that cannot hold,
A fort that shuts its soldiers out,
A commandant who’ll only pout;
Tar that can’t be washed away,
A broken cup, stained and gray;
And worse than that or even this,
A god’s own sandal filled with piss.
She’s rock that’s soft and useless.
She’s fruit that’s dry and juiceless.’
You’ve had your share of boys, that’s true,
But which of them came twice for you?
Let me list the ones whose lives you blew:

First was Tammuz, the virgin boy you took,
after a three-year-long seductive look.
Then you lusted for a fancy, colored bird,
and cut its wing so it could not herd.
Thus in the lovely woods at night,
The bird sings, ‘I’m blind. I have no sight.’
You trapped a lion, too, back then.
Its cock went in your form-as-hen.
And then you dug him seven holes
in which to fall on sharpened poles.

You let a horse in your back door
By lying on a stable floor;
But then you built the world’s first chain
To choke his throat and end his reign.
You let him run with all his might
As lovers sometimes do at night
Before you harnessed his brute force
With labor mean, a cruel divorce.
So did his mother weep and wail
To see his hoof set with a nail.

Gilgamesh sings on, telling of two other victims: a shepherd boy and a plowman named Ishullanu, who “trimmed her father’s trees.” After hearing all of this, Ishtar goes to her father Anu and cries, “Daddy, daddy, pleeeeease, Gilgamesh called me a tease!” Anu asks her if she started it, but Ishtar demands that he unleash the Bull of Heaven on him or else she would wreck havoc. Anu warns that it will lead to years of famine, but Ishtar tells him that she has seen to those that she loved. Gilgamesh’s refusal to marry Ishtar and the subsequent famine may reflect the belief that Ishtar’s Sacred Marriage ceremony was intended to ensure a fertile year. If Gilgamesh had refused to participate in such a ceremony before a natural disaster hit, it would no doubt have been blamed on him. When the Bull of Heaven attacks, Enkidu shouts encouragement to Gilgamesh and grabs the bull. Gilgamesh then bull-dances around it and stabs it in the neck with a sword before tearing out it’s heart and offering it to Shamash. Ishtar appears on Uruk’s wall, wailing like a widow, and Gilgamesh throws a hunk of meat in her face, just as before. He fills the horns with 6 jars of oil, but brings it to the altar of his stepfather Lugalbanda rather than Ishtar, and then has them enshrined. The two wash the blood off in the forgiving river of the Euphrates and then party all night long.

In tablet seven, Enkidu tells Gilgamesh about a dream he has in which the gods discuss which one of them should be held guilty for the death of the Bull of Heaven. Although Shamash intervenes for them, saying that they slew Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven with his consent, the others want revenge. Enkidu soon grows sick, and begins to blame the 200-foot gate that crushed his hand during his adventure to Humbaba’s forest, which he says was crafted on the holy ground of Nippur, Enlil’s city. If the Cedar Forest was in Elam, then this gate may have been the been the “limit of Shamash” that provided the border between Akkad and Elam. Enkidu begins cursing the hunter who first found him and his former lover Shemhet, but Shamash comes to him and tells him if she hadn’t of brought him to Uruk, he never would have met Gilgamesh and have become famous. Shamash tells him how Gilgamesh will show Uruk how to mourn for Enkidu as well, and then go mad with grief, which makes Enkidu speechless and resolved to death. Enkidu then has a vision of the dark prison that awaits him and makes a final regret that he was robbed of his warrior’s destiny to die in battle.

In tablet eight, Gilgamesh leads Uruk in mourning and sets Enkidu’s body on a pedestal. In tablet nine, he decides to venture to the island of Dilmun to learn the secret of eternal life from the ark builder, Utnapishtim, in what can be called the proto-typical ‘journey to the wise man on the mountain.’ Just like in the Eridu Genesis, Utnapishtim is the only mortal to have been bestowed with immortality, and he is allowed to stay on the virgin island of Dilmun for all time. Gilgamesh fights lions and scorpion men until he reaches the Mountain of Mashu, where he speaks to one of the scorpion guardians. Although amazed that Gilgamesh had traveled further than any human before him, the guardian warned Gilgamesh that the land past him was dark and frozen. In tablet ten, Gilgamesh meets a woman named Siduri at the sea. Although she is afraid of Gilgamesh at first because of his haggard looks, she lets him in and gives him a drink that refreshes his soul. Gilgamesh asks her for help crossing the sea to Dilmun, but she tells him that only the sun god Shamash dared to venture there, and she tries to dissuade him from his quest:

“Remember, mighty king, that gods decreed the fates of all many years ago. They alone are let to be eternal, while we frail humans die as you yourself must some day do. What is best for us to do is to sing and dance. Relish warm food and cool drinks. Cherish children to whom your love gives life. Bathe easily in sweet, refreshing waters. Play joyfully with your chosen wife. It is the will of the gods for you to smile on simple pleasure in the leisure time of your short days.”

Gilgamesh then moves on, cutting through the forest until he reaches Utnapishtim’s ferryman, Urshanibi. Gilgamesh tells him his story but the ferryman makes him do penance for destroying idols and touching holy stones. After chopping down several trees and preparing them for the ferryman, Urshanibi grudgingly takes Gilgamesh across to Utnapishtim. Gilgamesh hails the Sumerian Noah as a legendary god and tells him how he traveled without rest, cursed and rejected, in order to meet him. Utnapishtim tells him, “Why cry over your fate and nature? Chance has fathered you. Your conception was an accidental combination of the divine and mortal. I do not presume to know how to help the likes of you.” He goes on to tell Gilgamesh that although no one has ever seen Death, it is real. Only Shamash knows how many more people will die from conflicts and natural disasters. “Somewhere above us, where the goddess Mammetum decides all things, Mother Chance sits with the Annunaki and there she settles all decrees of fable and of fortune. There they issue lengths of lives; then they issue times of death. But the last matter is always veiled from human beings. The length of lives can only be guessed.”

In tablet eleven, Gilgamesh praises Utnapishtim as a warrior who preferred peace and asks Utnapishtim how he might ascend to become one with the gods. Utnapishtim tells him that only he would dare ask such a question, but that he would tell him a story no one had heard. He tells how the gods met in Shurrupuk and decided to flood the land and how Ea (that is, Enki) warned him to forsake wealth and build the ark. Utnapishtim asks what he should tell everyone else and Ea says to tell them that Enlil hates them. He builds the ark in a week, and then the sky storms for another week, and even the gods cry at it’s destructive power. Tears flow down Utnapishtim’s face as he opened a hole in the ark and saw the morning sun. The waters recede for another week and the ark comes to rest on Mount Nimush. Utnapishtim performs a sacrifice and the sweet smell gathers the gods in flight above him in apparitions. Aruru, the earth goddess who created man and Enkidu, blames the flood on Enlil and tells the gods not to allow him any of the food. Enlil is outraged that Utnapishtim lives, but Ninurta reminds him that only Ea can create speech, and Ea himself tells Enlil:

“Sly god, sky darkener, and tough fighter, how dare you drown so many people without consulting me? Why not just kill the one who offended you, drown only the guilty? Keep his life cord; harness his destiny. Rather than killing rains, set cats at people’s throats. Rather than killing rains, set starvation on dry, parched throats. Rather than killing rains, set sickness on the minds and heads of people. I was not the one who revealed our god-awful secrets. Blame Utnapishtim, who sees everything, and knows everything.”

Utnapishtim tells how Enlil then came down and raised him and his wife from the slime and deified them, sending them to “rule the place where rivers start,” matching the description given in Genesis in which “A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from which it was separated into four headwaters.” (2:10). This flood story found in the Epic of Gilgamesh is also the one that most resembles the hybrid one redacted in Genesis. Unlike the earlier versions, animals are also brought on the ark, confirming that the conception is that of a world flood instead of a localized one. Also like the Bible version, Utnapishtim sends out three different birds to test the waters just as Noah did.

It’s often said that the flood story in the Bible is superior to the earlier pagan versions because it introduces a moral element to an otherwise senseless act of the gods. While the Epic of Atra-Hasis implies that Enlil caused the flood because he couldn’t sleep, the Epic of Gilgamesh says that Enlil “hated” the people, presumably because of their bad actions. Whether one or the other is better is relative to one’s own value system. In modern times, adding a moral meaning to a disaster is usually taken as sign of disrespect towards it’s victims. For example, there have been some attempts by some religious thinkers to interpret the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina as divine retribution, but these ideas have been met with a lot of verbal backlash. Attributing the death of not only the guilty but also the innocent, even babies, to a vengeful god is not a comforting thought for many people. This seems to include many ancient people, reflected by Enki’s scolding of Enlil. Although certainly foreign to our own moral conceptions, the Epic of Gilgamesh nevertheless portrays Utnapishtim as being praised for being a peaceful warrior. Gilgamesh is ridiculed for destroying idols, while many parts of the Old Testament advocate murder and the destruction of idols on the grounds of religious intolerance. Certainly the Greek version of the flood contains an ethical message against cannibalism and human sacrifice. It’s also possible that there are allusions in the earlier versions of the flood story to a “moral” reason for the flood that has been lost in translation. Ostensibly, the flood is attributed to the people creating a “noise” that Enlil does not like, but is not explained in adequate detail. This may have been meant to be taken literally, that the actual sound of so many people talking some how bothered him, or it could possibly refer to cries of injustice, similar to how God “hears” the blood of Abel crying to him from the ground in Genesis (4:10).

After the flood story, Utnapishtim then tells Gilgamesh to reflect on the story and consider which gods will be called on the direct his path and future life. He asks that Gilgamesh stay awake with the stars and pray for an entire week, but Gilgamesh quickly falls asleep the first night. Utnapishtim bakes bread every day for Gilgamesh as he sleeps, and after he awakens from a death-like sleep, there are six loaves. Seeing that he failed, Gilgamesh says, “Help me, Utnapishtim. Where is home for one like me whose self has been robbed of life? My own bed is where death sleeps and I crack her spine on every line where my foot falls.” Utnapishtim calls for his ferry man and asks him to take Gilgamesh to the freshwater pools to clean his wounds, tie up his hair, and give him a sacred cloak.

Gilgamesh then returns and Utnapishtim’s wife convinces her husband to reward him for the long journey he took to find him. So Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh of a plant of eternal life which has stinging thistles and hides in the rocks and thrusts itself deep into the ground. Gilgamesh goes out in search for it and decides to explore the bottom a freezing cold pool of water by jumping in with weights. The weights take him to bottom of the pool quickly, where he sees the plant and grabs it. The thistles sting him and the plant holds fast the ground, but Gilgamesh is able to pull it out and then throw off the weights to swim back to the surface. Gilgamesh is ecstatic and boasts that he is going to let all the aged men of Uruk eat some of it, so that they all could be forever young. But after setting up camp, Gilgamesh bathed himself in a pool and a snake came by and ate the plant. He sees the snake turn young and then begins to weep, saying, “Why do I bother working for nothing? Who even notices what I do? I don’t value what I did and now only the snake won eternal life. In minutes, swift currents will lose forever that special sign that god had left me.” Urshanabi takes him back home to Uruk, and as they arrive, Gilgamesh tells the boatman, “Rise up now, Urshanabi, and examine Uruk’s wall. Study the base, the brick, the old design. Is it permanent as can be? Does it look like wisdom designed it? The house of Isthar in Uruk is divided into three parts: the town itself, the palm grove, and the prairie.” In one version of the story, Gilgamesh tells Urshanabi that the city’s walls were built by the Seven Sages.

The theme of a snake stealing eternal life is another parallel that can be found in the Garden of Eden story. In this story, the snake eating the plant of eternal life and “turning young” is probably a reference to the snake’s ability to shed it’s skin, thus taking on a new “younger” body. In Genesis, God punishes the snake for deceiving Eve by taking away his legs and making him crawl in the dust on it’s belly. Vestigial limbs in the form of nub-like legs on primitive snakes like the python and boa constrictor prove that snakes did in fact have legs at one time, but lost them in the evolutionary process millions of years ago. In differing ways, both stories combine an explanation for the mortality of humankind with why the snake is unique among animals.

As mentioned earlier, the twelfth tablet is usually seen as an appendix, with the general consensus that it was added to the story at a later date. It begins half way through Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld with Gilgamesh lamenting the loss of his drum, without any back story as to how he built it out of Inanna’s haluppu tree and lost it due to the complaints of Uruk’s citizens. Enkidu suddenly reappears without explanation as well, volunteering to descend into the netherworld to get the drum. Gilgamesh gives Enkidu the rules of the Netherworld in rhyming form, at the end saying, “Around you, Enkidu, the lament of the dead will whirl and scream, for she [Ereshkigal] alone, in that good place, is at home who, having given birth to beauty, has watched that beauty die. No graceful robe any longer graces her naked self and her kind breasts, once warm with milk, have turned into bowls of cold stone.” Again, Enkidu ignores Gilgamesh’s advice and wears bright clothes and makeup, takes weapons with him, and mocks the dead. He went clothed before the naked, ate in front of the starving, and danced before the grieving, kissed a girl, struck a woman, enjoyed his fatherhood, and fought with his son. Enlil and the moon god Suen ignore Gilgamesh’s pleas to bring Enkidu back, but Ea decides to order Nergal to free him. In other mythological texts, Nergal is said to have pulled Ereshkigal off her throne by her hair to become king of the netherworld, but in this story, he is a soldier who “is accustomed to absurd orders.” Nergal brings Gilgamesh half way down and Enkidu half way up, and the two meet between the surface and the netherworld. Reluctantly, Enkidu tells Gilgamesh what the netherworld is like: how the man who never fathered children was a “no-man who died,” how the man who fathered only one son sat sobbing in a field, and how men with more and more sons are happier and happier. Those who died too soon sit on a couch sipping water and those who died in war still have relatives who weep for him. Homeless nomads are still wandering restlessly and those who are not given food at their graves must scrounge for it in dumps. The story then abruptly ends.


Their Secret Identities

The description of Enkidu has prompted some readers to question the meaning behind his status as a “wild man.” Did this mean that he was a wandering nomad? Could he have been another race or species of man, like a Sasquatch or Neanderthal? Unless the depiction of Enkidu eating grass is meant as hyperbole, his stomach must have been more adapted to eating like apes and monkeys do. Might the monster Grendel from the Epic of Beowulf be another example of cross-racial or cross-species exaggeration? Another possibility is that Enkidu simply represented another, more earth-bound culture. If it was a priestess of Inanna/Ishtar who brought Enkidu to fight Gilgamesh in Uruk, is it possible that the story might be the symbolic representation of a rival king backed by the E-Anna temple to take Gilgamesh’s throne? Enkidu is called the “son of a fish,” which matches the title of the king who ruled before Gilgamesh, Dumuzi the Fisherman. While Dumuzi the Fisherman is recorded as defeating Enmebaragesi, Enkidu is said to have fought Enmebaragesi’s son Agga with Gilgamesh at Uruk. Dumuzi the Fisherman is also said to have come from Kuara, which has been identified with modern day Tell al-Lahm, a small town on the northern coast of the Lower Sea, near Eridu, the home of Adapa. Despite it’s size, it was important because it was the central sea port for the Persian Gulf, and relied heavily on sea trade, especially with Dilmun. While Uruk hosted between 50,000 and 80,000 people, spread out amongst 1,000 acres, Kuara was made up of around 5,000, with an urban area of less than 50 acres. If Enkidu came from Kuara, it may have been a culture shock. The deity of Kuara was Asarluhi, a son of Enki, who may have been another name for Dumuzi. A Sumerian hymn to Asarluhi also refers to him as Marduk, who would later become the titular deity of Babylon. Dumuzi’s name may have originally been changed into Enkidu to distinguish him from the god he was named after, or Enkidu may have been Dumuzi’s son who continued the fight with Kish that his father started. If Enkidu can be identified with Dumuzi the Fisherman or a relative thereof, it’s possible he lost a military conflict with Gilgamesh and became his “slave,” as he is referred to in the earliest Sumerian episodes, but then allied with Gilgamesh and went on a war campaign with him to Elam.

Gilgamesh has sometimes been referred to as the Babylonian Hercules within academia, and although the myth of Heracles is rooted in the Mycenaean royal family of ancient Greece, there are some noticeable themes that parallel the two strong-man figures. Both Gilgamesh and Hercules came into on-off conflicts with a the central goddess of their respective pantheons. Hercules was often accompanied by his nephew Iolus, and the stories of Gilgamesh set the earliest example of the sidekick theme. They are both known to have fought lions. Gilgamesh fights the Bull of Heaven and the 7th labor of Heracles was to capture the white Cretan Bull. The theme of twin mountains are found in both stories as well. Gilgmaesh travels to Mount Mashu, which means “twin mountains,” in order to reach the island of Dilmun, and Hercules is said to have opened the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic by splitting the mountain with his club, forming the Straight of Gilbraltor between the “Pillars of Hercules.”

The 11th labor of Heracles was to find the legendary Garden of the Hesperides, which like Dilmun, was located on an island paradise filled with trees. Heracles was to take three golden apples of eternal life from the garden, which he finds in some versions after rescuing Prometheus from his eternal torture by Zeus. In some versions, the apples are guarded by a giant serpent or dragon named Ladon, and similar to the story of Gilgamesh and the haluppu tree in Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld, Heracles kills the serpent. The serpent Ladon is named after the seven-headed sea serpent that Ba’al Hadad slays in Ugartic myth. Known as Lotan, it is widely identified with Leviathan, the multi-headed serpent that Yahweh is said to have slain or will slay in Isaiah, Psalms, and Revelation. In Norse myth, the evil serpent Nidhogg, along with other serpents, constantly eat the roots of the World Tree from within the underworld, as it’s resources are consumed by birds and stags living in it’s branches, and replenished by the muddy water of the Norns. The Hungarian world tree was also known for it’s golden apples, the snakes in it’s roots in the underworld, and eagles nested on it’s branches, all forming parallels with the Sumerian haluppu tree. World trees also feature in Chinese, Indian, Greek, Siberian, and Mesoamerican cultures.

In both the Sumerian episode, Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld, and the Epic of Gilgamesh, we find the theme of Enkidu, “the son of a fish,” acting as a surrogate who dies in Gilgamesh’s place. This theme resurfaces once again in the early 100’s A.D. in the story of the mysterious death of Antinous, the lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, as mentioned in the last chapter. Antinous is said to have died in Hadrian’s place, and it has been hypothesized that the young man may have committed suicide in order to improve Hadrian’s failing health. Hadrian was himself a worshipper of Melqart, whom the Greeks called the “Tyrian Heracles.” Jesus, likewise, is expressed as having died as a surrogate for the sins of many in both the Pauline epistles and the gospels. Tyre and Sidon, which today are in modern Lebanon, were taken by Jews to be Gentile cities of assumed sinfulness, but the Synoptic gospels reverse this assumption, having Jesus say in Matthew, “it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment, than for you.” (11:22). He does this to criticize the cities of Korazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, saying that if Tyre and Sidon had seen the miracles those cities had, they would have repented long ago.

In trying to learn the origin of Heracles, the “father of history,” Herodotus sailed to Tyre, in Phoenicia, and visited the great Temple of Melqart, which has two great pillars that glow in the night, one of gold and the other “smaragdos” (a green stone, traditionally translated as emerald). The priests at the temple tell him that their temple was built at the same time as the city, 2,300 years ago, which would place it’s construction some time around 2,750 B.C., around the same time Gilgamesh was said to have constructed temples and monuments “for future generations” in the Land of the Living. The city has another temple where the same god is worshipped as the “Thasian Heracles,” which prompts Herodotus to go to the island of Thasos, in the Aegean Sea. There he finds a temple built when the island was colonized by Phoenicians who “sailed in search of Europa.” This temple, he says, was built five generations before the time of the Heracles of Greek myth. All together, this convinces him that there is an ancient god Heracles and the wisest Hellenes are the ones who maintain two temples to Heracles: one to the hero and one to the god. The Greek historian and philosopher Strabo, writing in the early first century, says that in his own time the two bronze pillars in the westernmost temple of Tyre were known as the “True Pillars of Heracles,” but he himself doubts that because the inscriptions on the pillars tell only of the expenses taken by the Phoenicians in constructing them and nothing of Heracles.

Josephus cites a historian named Menander of Ephesus in saying that the temples to Melqart were first consecrated by King Hiram I of Tyre in the mid-900’s B.C. This fits more with the earliest archaeological evidence, which shows that most Phoenician cities of this time replaced the traditional pantheon with a single god and goddess for each city. In Tyre, this was Melqart and Astarte, and in nearby Byblos it was Ba’al Shamem and Ba’alat Gebal. The name Melqart means “king of the city.” King Hiram himself is known in the Old Testament as the king who helped build Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. In 1 Kings, Hiram is said to have cast two bronze pillars, and did some other bronze work for the temple (7:13). In 2 Chronicles, Hiram praises Yahweh and sends a metalworker named Huram-abi to work on the temple, and also sends Solomon wheat, barley, olive oil, wine, even ferries cedar wood down the sea of Joppa for the temple of Jerusalem (2:13). Hiram is said to have brought about sweeping changes during his time, including: building a great royal palace, having engineers use cisterns to catch rain water, and doubling Tyre’s size by joining the island to another nearby island with a landfill. The Freemasons honor “Hiram Abiff” in Masonic ritual, although it is not agreed upon whether he is to be identified with King Hiram or the metalworker Huram-abi.

The “Tyrian Heracles” was possibly the same god that the infamous King Ahab attempted to introduce into Israel. In 1 Kings, Elijah has a contest with 450 of Ba’al’s prophets on Mt. Carmel in northern Israel in which the god who accepted a bull sacrifice by igniting it on fire would be acknowledged as the true god. During the contest, Elijah mocks the priests of Ba‘al, saying, “Cry out loud: for he is a god; either he is lost in thought, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened.” (18:27). The phrase “on a journey” may be a reference to one of the famed journeys of Heracles or Gilgamesh, while the phrase “wandered away” was probably intended as an insult to suggest that the god had gone off to defecate. The Ba’al cult was ultimately extinguished from Israel by King Jehu, who according to 2 Kings worshipped Yahweh, but did so in the form of the golden bull (11:29).

Archaeological evidence shows that Melqart’s cult spread with Phoenician culture from Tyre, overshadowing the worship of Eshmun in Sidon, moved west into Africa, where Carthage was known to send a 10% yearly tribute to Tyre until the time of Alexander the Great, and went as far west as Spain and Portugal. In 2004, a highway crew discovered a Punic temple in Avenida España, near Ibiza, which held texts mentioning Melqart along with the gods Ba’al, Astarte, and Eshmun. Alexander the Great is said to have visited the Melqart temple that King Hiram had built during his war campaign and worshipped Melqart there before setting fire to the city, which involved building a siege bridge across the coast to the island. Coins minted from the 300’s B.C. show a picture of Melqart’s head that is indistinguishable from Heracles. At least three other temples to Melqart have been found in Spain and Portugal, one of them in Gibraltar, whose influence probably helped bring the naming of the Pillars of Hercules there. The name Hercules itself does not derive from the Greek form Heracles, but instead comes from the Etrsucan form of the name, Heracle, which by 500 B.C. was reduced to Hercle.